rally from each theme, and coun- terpoints of audiovisual narration achieve effective results in the poli- ticization an
Sin Frontera Primavera 2011 Documentos / Archivo de Cine “Toward a Third Cinema” Octavio Getino y Fernando Solanas TRICONTINENTAL. N.14. Octubre de 1969. P.107132 La Habana: Organización de Solidaridad de los Pueblos de África, Asia y América Latina.
Publicado originalmente en Cuba en la revista Tricontinental (1969) el influyente manifiesto “Hacia un tercer cine” de Octavio Getino y Fernando “Pino” Solanas propone un nuevo lenguaje cinematográfico propiamente tercermundista y autónomo, una nueva manera de hacer cine fuera del aparato imperialista y de sus redes de difusión. En dicho ensayo el grupo de cineastas autodenominado Colectivo Cine Liberación establece los objetivos de una nueva estética de cine latinoamericano. Tal como se expresa en el texto este “tercer cine” debe constituirse desde la etapa inicial de producción como antiimperialista y revolucionario; un nuevo cine que busque incidir directamente en los fundamentos materiales del proceso histórico bajo una militancia izquierdista activa y latinoamericana. Pero más allá de sus postulados ideológicos este texto revela la urgencia impostergable de la tarea política del intelectual dentro de la turbulenta crisis social y política en la que fue concebido y apunta hacia la compleja situación latinoamericana frente al imperialismo, por un lado doblegándose ante la fortaleza incontenible del poderío económico y, por otro, renegándose combativamente mediante la revuelta revolucionaria.
popular sentiment. Mother, How beautiful to fight for liberty! There is a message of justice in each bullet I shoot, Old dreams that take wing like birds. sings Jorge Rebelo of Mozambique. How will the new culture develop? Only time will tell. One fact is certain: we have not completely lost the ancient thread of our authentic culture; the cultures of Angola, Mozambique, and Guinea are not dead. We still have a heritage. In spite of the slave trade, military conquest, and administrative occupation, in spite of forced labor and detribalization, the village communities have preserved in differing states of alteration their traditional culture. Isn't it true that the new culture born in the heat of battle will be a process of confirmation of the nations of Angola, Mozambique, Guinea, and Cape Verde?
Certainly, since cultural community - together with language, territory, and economic life - is the fourth aspect of nationhood. This schema defined by Stalin continues to guide our investigations and today makes us view the national community as a relative linguistic,- politico-economic, and cultural unit. We know the process by which Portuguese colonialization prevented our different countries from attaining a national existence. The most common result of colonialization is the break in the historical continuity of the old bonds between men, from both a family and an ethnic viewpoint. The colonial status which unites men in a market economy a t the lowest level, which depersonalizes them culturally, negates nationhood. Now, then, armed struggle allows these communities to reenter history. When this struggle unites all ethnic groups under the banner of nationalism. it becomes a factor which accelerates the process of nationhood.' Armed struggle, in order to use a concept developed by Frantz Fanon, is the cultural fact par excellence. Returning to the role of the intellectual, it remains to say that the intellectuals in our countries have been the driving force behind the awakening of political consciousness and continue to be one of the components of the revolutioniry leadership of our liberation struggles. The nature of Portuguese colonialization throughout the centuries has been no stranger to i h e type of compromise made by the assimilated. In effect, it is the assimilated who kill the colonial culture in order to live within the values of the "indigenous" civilization. With some differences in detail, this process of integration of the intellectuals with the revolution followed an identical pattern in Angola, Mozambique, Guinea, and the archipelagos of Saint Thomas and Cape Verde. We have, therefore, one common destiny: to forge rational arms for the awakening of the people's consciousness and to break the chains of cultural duality by participating in revolution.
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Toward a Third Cinema Octavio Getino and Fernando Solanas
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In an alienated world, culture -obviously is a deformed and deforming product. To overcome this it is necessary to have a culture of and for the revolution, a subversive culture capable of contributing to the downfall of capitalist society. its In the specific case of the cinema - art of the masses par excellence transformation from mere entertainment into an active means of dealienation becomes imperative. Its role in the battle for the complete liberation of man is of primary importance. The camera then becomes a gun, and the cinema must be a guerrilla cinema. This is the proposition of Fernando Solanas (33-yearlold Argentine) and Octavio Getino (34-year-old Spaniard) in this article written especially for Tricontinental: Solanas began his cinematic activity. with the short-length film Seguir andando (Keep Walking). Getino, who has lived in Argentina since he was 16 years old, won the 1964 Short Story Award of Casa de las Americas 'with Chulleca; in 1965 Trasmallos. Both recently produced La hora de 10s homos he made the film-short ~ . (The Time of the Furnaces), a vigorous film denunciation of the injustices to which the Latin-American peoples are subjected.
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JUST a short time ago it would have seemed like a Quixotic adventure in the colonialized, neocolonialized, or even the imperialist nations themselves to make any attempt to create films of decoloni.zation.that turned their back on or actively opposed the System. Until recently, film had been synonymous with show or amusement: in a word, it was one more consumer g d . At best, films succeeded in bearing witness to the decay of bourgeois values and testifying to social injustice. As a rule, films only dealt with effect, never with cause; it was cinema of mystification or antihistoricism. It was surplus value cinema. Caught up in these conditions, films, the most valuable tool of communication of our times, were destined to satisfy only the ideological and economic interests of the owners of the film industry, the lords of the world film market, the great majority of whom were from the United States. Was it possible to overcome this situation? How could the problem of turning out liberation films be approached when costs came to several thousand dollars and the distribution and exhibition channels were in the hands of the enemy? How courld the continuity of work be guaranteed? -Howcould the public be reached? How could Systemimposed repression and censorship be vanquished? These questions, which could be multiplied in all directions, led and still lead many
people to scepticism or rationalization: "revolutionary films cannot be made before the revolution"; "revolutionary films have been possible only in the libersted countries"; "without the support of revolutionary political power, revolutionary films or art is impossible." The mistake was due to taking the same approach to reality and films as did the bourgeoisie. The models of production, distribution, and exhibition continued to be those of Hollywood precisely because, in ideology and politics, films had not yet become the vehicle for a clearly drawn differentiation between bourgeois ideology and politics. A reformist policy, as manifested in dialogue with the adversary, in coexistence, and in the relegation of national contradictions to those between two supposedly unique blocs - the USSR and the USA was and is unable to produce any-thing but a cinema within the System itself. At best, it can be the "progressive" wing of Establishment cinema. When all is said and done, such cinema was doomed to wait until the world conflict was resolved peacefully in favor of socialism in order to change qualitatively. The most daring attempts of those film-makers who strove to conquer the fortress of official cinema ended, as Jean-Luc Goddard eloquently put it, with the film-makers themselves "trapped inside the fortress." But the questions that were recently raised appeared promising; they arose from a new hi~torica~l situation to which the film-maker, as is often the case with tRe edu-
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cated strata of our countries, was to i311 artist;ic activi~ t ywith the idei such :ictivity ,must ineluctabl! rather a late-comer: ten years of tha t-L---L-, J...a +ha brl; System, and thc veu the Cuban Revolution, the Vietnam- be ausw ese struggle, and the development other which maintains an inne of a worldwide liberation movement duality of the intellectual: on t h ~ whose moving force is to be found one hand, the "work of art," "the in the Third v o r l d countries. The privilege of beauty," an art and a existence of masses on the world- beauty which are not necessarily wide revolutionary plane was the bound to the needs of the revolusubstantial questions fact couldwithout ltot which have those be tinnary political process, and, on the ler, a political commitment which posed A new historical situatjIon gellerally consists in signing cerand a new man born in the prociess tai:n anti-imperialist manifestoes. In Jprtictice, this point of view means of the anti-imperialist struggle (Amanded a new, revolutionary at- the! separation of politics and art. 7rhis polarity rests, as we see it, titude from the film-makers of 1the world. The question of whether or on two omissions: first, the concepnot militant cinema was possible tion of culture, science, art, and before' the revolution began to be cinema as univocal and universal replaced, at least within small terms, and, second, an insufficiently groups, by the question of whether clear idea of the fact that the revor not such a cinema was neces- olution does not begin with the taksary to contribute to the possibility .ing of political power from irnperialof revolution. An affirmative an- ism and the bourgeoisie, but rather swer was the starting point for the begins at the moment when tkfirst attempts to channel the proc- masses sense the need for chang ess of seeking possibilities in nu- and their intellectual vanguarc merous countries. Examples are begin to study and carry out th - i on di Newsreel, a US new-left film group, change through r the cinegiornali of the Italian s;tu- feirent fronts. an~d cinen dent movement, the films made by Culture, art science, ---J?l:* an- ,,ways all the Etats G6nCraux' du CinCma Fr--respond to. ~ ~ 1 1 ~ 1 ~ ccla ting qais, and those of the British and interests. In the neocolonial situatic Japanese student movements, all a two concepts of culture, art, scienc continuation and deepening of the and cinema compete: that of tl work of a Joris Ivens or a Chris rulers and that of the nation. Arlu Marker. Let it suffice to observe the this situation will continue, as long films of a Santiago Alvarez in Cuba, as the national concept is not idenor the cinema being developed by tified with that of the rulers, as me- long as the status of colony or semidifferent film-makers in say, cotlony continues in force. Moreover, land of all:' as Bolivar .tin- thle duality will be overcome and as they seek a revolutio .- ill reach a single and universal American cinema. A profound debate on the rolle of caitegory (~ n l ywhen the best values intellectuals and artists before lib- 01i man ernerge from proscription .to eration today is enriching the 1per- ac:hieve hl_ egemony, when the liberaspectives of intellectual work a n tion or man is universal. In the over the world. However, this de- meantime, there exist our culture bate oscillates between two poles: and their culture, our cinema and one which proposes to relegate all their cinema. Because our culture ulse towards emancipation, intellectual work capacity to a spe- is cifically political or political-Inilitary function, denying perspecl;ives 1.
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ed man that we a r t w . h i ~ the h not due to the use of two languanew man will destroy -.by startges but because of the conjuncing to stoke the fire today. ture of two cultural patterns of The anti-imperialist struggle of thinking. One is national, that df the peoples of the Third World and the people, and the other is esof their equivalents inside the imtranging, that of the classes suborperialist countries constitutes today dinated to outside forces. The the axis of the world revolution. admiration that the upper classThird cinema is, in our opinion, the es express for the US or Europe cinema that recognizes in that strugis the highest expression of their gle the most gigantic cultural, sciensubjection. With the colonializatific, and artistic manifestation of tion of the upper classes the our time, the great possibility of culture of imperialism indirectconstructing a 'liberated personality ly introduces among the masses with each people as the starting knowledge which cannot be supoint - in a word, the decolonizapervisedr2 tion of culture. Just as they are not masters of The culture, including the cinema, the land upon which they walk, the of a neocolonialized country is just neocolonialized people are not masthe of an d e ~ e n - ters of the ideas that envelop them. dence that generates models and A knowledge of national reality born from the needs of im- presupposes going into the web of n~v'alistexpansion. lies' and confusion that arise from order to itself,. nee- dependence. The intellectual is ~lonialismneeds to convince the obliged to refrain from spontaneous "pie of a thought; if he does think, he gcntheir own inferiority. Sooner or erally runs the risk of doing so in later, the inferior man recognizes ~~~~~h or E~~~~~~- never in the Man with a capital M; this recog- language of a culture of his om, nition means the destruction of which, like the process of national .s defenses- If you want to be and social liberation, is still hazy man, says the you and incipient. Every piece of data, Ive be like me, speak my every concept that floats around us, language, Your own being, is part of a, framework of mirages yourself intG me. As that it is difficult to take apart, as the l7th century the The native bourgeoisie of the port Jesuit missionaries proclaimed the cities as B~~~~~ A ~ and~ aptitude of the [South American] their respective intellectual elites, native for constituted, from the very origills works art. Copyist, translator, of our history, the transmission helf at best a spectator, of neocolonial penetration. BeJlind the neocolonialized intellectual such watchwords as "Civiliz~tionor always be encouraged to barbarism!" manufactured in Arrefuse to assume his creative pos- gentina by Europeanizing liberal. gibilities. Inhibitions, uprooted- ism, was .the attempt to impose a ness, cultural COSmo- civilization fully in keeping with politanism, artistic imitation, met- the needs of imperialist expansion aphysical exhaustion, betrayal of country - 911 find fertile soil La hora de 10s hornos (The Time af in which to grow. Forges), "Neocolonialismo y violencia" (Neocolonialism - and Violence"). Culture becomes biIingual aLlu
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Juan Jose Hernandez Arregui, Imperia. llsmo Y cultura (Imperialism and cul.
and the desire to destroy the resistance of the national masses, which were successively called the "rabble," a "bunch of blacks," and "zoological detritus'.' in our country and "the unwashed hordes" in Bolivia. In this way the ideologists of the semicountries, past masters in "the play of big words, with an implacable, dGtailed, and rustic universalism,'' "erved as spokesmen of those followers of Disraeli who intelligently proclaimed: "I prefer the rights of the English to the rights ,".f m " L The middle sectors were and are the best recipients of cultural n e b mlonialism. Their ambivalent class condition, their buffer position between social polarities, and their broader possibilities of access to civil;,zation offer imperialism a base of social support which has attajned considerable importance in some Latin-American countries. colonial situa~ f in , the tion, cultural penetration is the complement of a foreign army of occupation, during certain stages that penetration takes on greater importance in the neocolonial countries. ~t serves to institutionalize and give a normal appearance to dependence. The main objective of this cultural deformation is to , keep the people from realizing their neocolonialized and aspiring to change it. In this way pedagogical colonialization is an effective for the colonial p01ice.~ Mass communications tend to complete the destruction of a national awareness and of a collective subjectivity on the way to enlightenment, a destruction which begins as soon as the child has access to these media, the education and culture of the ruling classes. In Argentina 26 television channels; one .million television sets; more than 50 radio stations; hundreds of news-
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papers,. periodicals, and magazines; and thousands of records, films, etc. join their acculturating role of the colonialization of taste and consciousness to the process of neocolonial education which begins in primary school and is completed in the university. "Mass communications are more effective for neocolonialism than napalm. What is real, true, and rational is to be found on the. margin of the Law, just as are the people. Violence, crime, and destruction come to be Peace, Order, and N ~ r m a l c y . " ~ ruth, then, amounts to subversion. Any f0XTl of expression or cornmunication that tries to show national reality is subversion. Cultural penetration, pedagogical c ~ ~ ~ n i a l i ~ and a t i ~mass n , communications all join forces today in a desperate attempt to absorb, neutralize, or eliminate any expression that responds to an attempt i t decolonization. Neocolonialism makes a serious attempt to castrate, to digest, the cultural forms that arise beyond the bounds of its own aims. Attempts are 1Gade to remove from them precisely what makes them effective and dangerous, their politici~ation.Or, to put it another way, to separate the cultural manifestation from the fight for national independence. Ideas such as "Beauty in itself is revolutionary" and "All new cinema is revolutionary" are idealistic aspirations that do not touch the neecolonial condition, since they continue to conceive of cinema, art, and beauty as universal abstractions and not as an integral part 0i the national processes of decoloniza. tion.
Rene Zaveleta Mere, ,,,iento de la ides 4
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Growth of the ~ a t i o n a l Conc La hora de 10s homos* ibid. Ibid.
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Any dispute, no matter how virulent, which does not serve to mobilize, agitate, and politicize sectors of the people to arm them rationally and perceptibly, in one way or another, for the struggle - is received with indifference or even with pleasure. Virurlence, nonconformism, plain rebelliousness, and discontent are just so many more products on the capitalist market; they are CO~sumer goods. This is especially true in a situation where the bourgeoisie is in need of a daily dose of shock and exciting elements of ~ ~ n t r o l l eviolence d - that is, violence which absorption by the System turns into pure stridency. Examples are the works of a socialist-tinged painting and sculpture which are greedily sought after by the new bourgeoisie to decorate their apartments and mansions; plays full anger and avant-gard-
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politicization - all of these "progressive" alternatives come to form the leftish wing of the System, the improvement of its cultural products. They will be doomed to carry out the best work on the left that the right is able to accept today and will thus only serve the surviva1 of the latter. "Restore words, dramatic actions, and images to the places where they can carry out a revolutionary role, where they will be useful, where they will become weapons in the struggle." 8 Insert the work as an original fact in the process of liberation, place it first at the service of {life itself, ahead of art; dissolve in the life of smietjr: only in this way, as Fanon said, can decolonization become possible and culture, cinema, and beauty - at least,,what is of greatest importance to us - become our culture, our films, and our
from the metropolis (examples are Rosas' federalism in. Argentina, the Lopez arid Francia regimes in Paraguay, and those of Bengido and Balmaceda in Chi,le) with a tradition that has continued well into our century: national-bourgeois, national-popular, and democratic-bourgeois attempts were made by Chrdenas, Yrigoyen, Haya de la Torre, Vargas, Aguirre Cerci'a, Perbn, and Arbenz. But as far as revolutionary prospects are concerned, the cycle has definitely been completed. The lines allowing for the deepening of the historical attempt of each of those experiences today pass through the sectors that understand the continent's situation as one of war and that are preparing, under the force of circumstances, to make that region the Viet-Nam of the coming decade. A war in which national liberation can only succeed when it is simultaneously poshlated as social liberation - socialism as the only valid perspective of any national liberation process. At this time in America there is room for neither passivity nor innocence. The intellectual's commitment is measured in terms of risks a s well as words and ideas; what he does to further the cause of liberation is what counts. The worker who goes on strike and thus risks losing his job or even his life, the student who jeopardizes his career, the militant who keeps silent under torture: each by his or her action commits us to something much more important than a vague gesture of s~lidarity.~. In a situation in which the "state of law" is replaced by the "state of facts," the intellectual, who is one more worker, functioning on a cultural front, must .become increasingly radicalized to avoid denial of self and to carry out what is expected of him in our times. The impotence of all reformist concepts
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ing t o Saigon to get a close-up view of
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The organization Pl6sticos de Vanguardia (Vanguard Artists) of Argentina.
has already been exposed sufficiently, not only in politics but also in culture and films - and especially in the latter, whose history is that of imperialist domination main1 Culture y Yankee. and cinema are national not because they are located within certain geographical limits, but when they respond to the particular needs of development and liberation of each people. The cinema which Is today dominant in our countries, set up to accept and just i f ~ ,dependence, the origin of all underdevelopment, can be nothing but a dependent and underdeveloped cinema. While, during the early history (or the prehistory) of the cinema, it was possible to speak of a German, an Italian, or a Swedish cinema clearly differentiated and corresponding to specific national characteristics, today such differences have disappeafed. The borders were wiped out along with the expansion of US imperialism and the film model that it imposed: Hollywod movies. In our times it is hard tc find a film within the field of com mercial cinema, including what ir known as "author's cinema," in botl the capitalist and socialist coun tries, that manages to avoid thc models of Hdlywood pictures. Tht latter have such a fast hold tha monumental works such as the USSR's Bondarchuk's War and Peace are also monumental examples of the submission to all the propositions imposed by the US movie industry (structure, language, etc.) and, consequently, tc its concepts. The placing of the cinema withir US models, even in the formal aspect, in language, leads to the adoption of the ideological forms that 9
Lo hora de 10s hornos, ibld.
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gave rise to precisely that language and no other. Even the appropriation of models which appear to be only technical, industrial, scientific, etc. leads to a conceptual depen~ dency situation, due to the fact that the cinema is an industry, but differs from other industries in that it has been created and organized in order to generate certain ideologies. The 35 mm. camera, 24 frames a second, arc lights, and a commercial place of exhibition for audiences were conceived not to gratuitously transmit any i'deology, but to satisfy, in the first place, the cultural and surplus value needs of a specific ideology, of a specific world-view: that of US financial
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The mechanistic takeover of a cinema conceived as a show to be exhibited in large theaters with a standard duration, hermetic structures that are born and die on the screen, satisfies. to be sure, the commercial interests of the production gmups, but it also leads to the absorption of forms of the bourgeois world-view which are the continuation of 19th century art, of bourgeois art: man is accepted only as a passive and consuming object; rather than having his ability to make history recognized, he is only permitted to read history, contemplate it, listen to it, and undergo it. The cinema as a spectacle aimed at a digesting object is the highest point that can be reached by bourgeois film making. The world, existence, and the historic process are enclosed within the frame of a painting, the same stage of a theater, and the movie screen; man is viewed as a consumer of ideology, and not as the creator of ideology. This notion is the starting point for the wonderful interplay of bourgeois philosophy and the obtaining of surplus value. The result is a
cinema studied by motivational analysts, sociologists and psycho1ogists, by the endless researchers of the dreams and frustrations of the masses, all aimed at selling movie-life, reality as it is conceived by the ruling classes. The first alternative to this type of cinema, which we could call the first cinema, arose with the socalled' "author's cinema," "expression cinema," "nouvel,le vague," "cinema novo," or, conventionally, the second cinema. This alternative signified a step forward inasmuch as it demanded that the film-maker be free to express himself in nonstandard language and inasmuch as it was an attempt at cultural decolonization. But such attempts have already reached, or are about to reach, the outer limits of what the system permits. The second cinema film-maker has remained "trapped inside the fortress" as Goddard put it, or is on his way to becoming trapped. The search for a market of 200 000 moviegoers in Argentina, a figure that is supposed to cover the costs of an independent . local production, the proposal of developing a mechanism of -industrial production parallel to that of the System but which would be distributed by the System according to its own norms, the struggle to better the laws protecting the cinema and replacing "bad officialsn by "less bad," etc. is a search lacking in viable prospects, unless you consider viable the prospect of becoming institutionalized as "the youthful, angry wing of society" - that is, of neocolonialized or capitalist society. Real alternatives diff&ng from those offered by the System are only possible if one of two requirements is fulfilled: making films that the System cannot assimilate and which are foreign to its needs, or making films that directly and ex. p1icitIy set out to fight the System *
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Neither of these requi~ementsfits
I1 tradiction."" This cutting off of the intellectual and artistic sectors from the processes of national liberation which, among other things, helps us to understand the limitations in which these processes have been unfolding - today tends to disappear in the measure that artists and intellectuals are beginning to discover the impossibility of destroying the enemy without first joining in a battle for their common interests. The artist is beginning to feel the insufficiency of his nonconformism and individual rebellion. And the revolutionary organizations, in turn, are discovering the vacuums that the struggle for power creates in the cultural sphere. The problems of film making, the ideological limitations of a film-maker in a neocolonialized country, etc. have thus far constituted objective factors in the lack of attention paid to the cinema by the people's organizations. Newspapers and other printed matter, posters and wall propaganda, speeches and other verbal forms of information,,enlightenment, and politicization are still the main means of communication between the organizations and the vanguard layers of the masses. But the new political positions of some film-makers and the subsequent appearance of fllms useful for liberation have permitted certain political vanguards to discover the importance of movies. This importance is to be found in the specific meaning of films as a form of communication and because of their particular characteristics, characteristics that allow them to draw audiences of different origins, many of them people who might not respond favorably to the announce-
within the alternatives that are still offered by the second cinema, but they can be found in the revolutionary opening towards a cinema outside and against the System, in a cinema of liberation: the third cinema. One of the most effective jobs done by neocolonialism is its cutting off of intellectual sectors, especially artists, from national reality by lining them up behind 'Ziniversa1 art and models." I t has been very common for intellectuals and artists to be found at the tail end of popular struggle, when they have not actually taken up positions against it. The social layers which have made the greatest contribution to the building of a national culture (understood as an impulse towards decolonization) have not been precisely the enlightened elites but rather the most exploited and uncivilized sectors. Popular organizations have very rightly distrusted the "intelalectual" and the "artist." When they have not been openly used by the bourgeoisie or imperialism, they have certainly been their indirect tools; most of them did not go beyond spouting a policy in favor of "peace and democracy," fearful of anything that had a national ring to it, afraid of contaminating art with politics and the artists with the revolutionary militant. They thus tended to obscure the inner causes determining neecolonialized society and placed in the foreground the outer causes, which, while "they are the condition for change, they can never be the basis for change";1° in Argentins they replaced the struggle against imperialism and the native oligarchy with the struggle of de- lo Mao Tae-Tung, On Prrotioe. mocracy against fascism, suppress- 11 Rodolfo Pruigross, El proletariado y 1s ing the fundamental contradjcti~n rcvoluoibn ntaoioml (The Prolekrld and of a neocolonialized country and replacing it with "a contradiction that was a copy of the world-wide Con-
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merit of a political speech. Films
offer an effective pretext for gathering an audience, in addition to the ideological message they contain. The capacity for synthesis and the penetration of the fiJm image, the possibilities offered by the living document and naked reality, and the power of enlightenment of audiovisual means make the film far more effective than any other tool of communication. It is hardly necessary to point out that those films which achieve an intelligent use of the possibilities of the image, adequate dosage of concepts, language and structure that flow naturally from each theme, and counterpoints of audiovisual narration achieve effective results in the politicization and mobilization of cadres and even in work with the masses, where this is possible. The students who raised barricades on the Avenida 18 de Julio in Montevideo after the showing of Me gustan 10s estudhntes (I Like Students) (Mario Handler), those who demonstrated and sang the "Internationale" in Merida and Caracas after the showing of La hora d e lm hornos (The Time of Furnaces), the growing demand for films such as those made by Santiago Alvarez and the Cuban documentary film movement, and the debates and meetings that take place after the undergmund or semipublic showings of third cinema films are the beginning of a twisting and difficult road being traveled in the consumer societies by the mass organizations (Cinegiornali liberi, in Italy, Zengakuren documentaries in Japan, etc.). For the first time in Latin America, organizations are ready and willing to employ films for political-cultural ends: the Chilean Partido Socialists provides its cadres with revolutionary film material, while Argentine revolutionary
Peronist and non-Peronist groups are taking an interest in doing likewise. Moreover, OSPAAAL is participating in the production and distribution of films that contribute to the anti-imperialist struggle. The revolutionary organizations are discovering the need for cadres who, among other things, know how to handle a film camera, tape recorders, and projectors in the most effective way possible. The struggle to seize power from the enemy is the meeting ground of the political and artistic vanguards engaged in a common task which is enriching to both. Some of the circumstances that delayed the use of films as a revolutionary tool until a short time ago were lack of equipment, technical difficulties, the compulsory specialization of each phase of work, and high costs. The advances that have taken place within each specialization; the simplification of movie cameras and tape recorders; improvements in the medium itself, such as rapid fitlm that can be printed in a normal light; automatic light meters; improved audiovisual synchronization; and the spread of know-how by means of specialized magazines with large circulations and even through nonspecialized media, have helped to demystify film making and divest it of that almost magic aura that made it seem that films were only within the reach of "artists," "geniuses," and "the privileged." Film making is increasingly within the reach of larger ,social dayers. Chris Marker experimented in France with groups of workers whom he provided with 8 mm. equipment and some basic instruction in its handling. The goal was to have the worker film his way of looking at the world, just as if he were writing it. This has opened up unheard-of prospects for the cinema; above all, a new conception of film making and the
execution. significance of art in our times. I make the revolution; therefore, Imperialism and capitalism, whether in the consumer society or I exist. This is the starting point in the neocolonialized country, veil - for the disappearance of fantasy everything behind a screen of im- and phantom to make way for living ages and appearances. The image human beings. The cinema of the of reality is more important than , revolution is at the same time one reality itself. It is a world peopled of destruction and construction: dewith fantasies and phantoms in struction of the image that neocolcwhich what is hideous is clothed in nialism has created of itself and of beauty, while beauty is disguised as us, and construction of a throbbing, the hideous. On the one hand, fan- living reality which recaptures truth tasy, the imaginary bourgeois uni- in any of its expressions. The restitution of things to their verse replete with comfort, equilibrium, sweet reason, order, ef- real place and meaning is an emificiency, and the possibility to "be nently subversive fact both in the someone." And, on the other, the neocolonial situation and in the conphantoms, we the lazy, we the in- sumer societies. In the former, the dolent and underdeveloped, we who seeming ambiguity or pseudo-objeccause disorder. When a neocolonial- tivity in newspapers, literature, etc. ized person accepts his situation, he m d the relative freedom of the peobecomes a Gungha Din, a traitor ple's organizations to provide their at the service of the colonialist, an own information cease to exist, givUncle Tom, a class and racial ren- ing way to overt restriction, when egade, or a fool, the easy-going it is a question of television and servant and bumpkin; but, when he radio, the two most important Sysrefuses to accept his situation of tem-controlled or monopolized comoppression, then he turns into a munications media. Last year's May resentful savage, a cannibal. Those events in France are quite explicit who lose sleep from fear of the on this point. In a wonld where the unreal rules hungry, those who comprise the System, see the revolutionary as a artistic expression is shoved along bandit, robber, and rapist; the first the channels of fantasy, fiction, lanbattle waged against them is thus guage in code, sign language, and not on a political plane, but rather messages whispered between the in the police context of law, ar- lines. Art is cut off from the conrests, etc. The more exploited a man crete facts - which, from the neois, the more he is placed on a plane colonialist standpoint, are accusaof insignificance. The mwe he re- tory testimonies - to turn back on sists, the more he is viewed as a itself, strutting about in a world beast. This can be seen in Africa of abstractions and phantoms, where addio, made by the fascist Jacopetti: it becomes "timeless" and historythe African savages, killer animals, less. Viet-Nam can be mentioned, wallow in abject anarchy once they but only far from Viet-Nam; Latin escape from white protection. Tar- America can be mentioned, but only zan died, and in his place were born far enough away from the continent Lumumbas and Lobemgulas, Nko- to be ineffective, in places where it it does mos, and the Madzimbamutos, and is depliticized anc this is something that neocolonialism not lead to action. The cinema known as aocumencannot forgive. Fantasy has been tary, with all the vastness that the replaced by phantoms, and man is turned into an extra who dies so Jacopetti can comfortably film his
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concept has today, from educational films to the reconstruction of a fact or a historical event, is perhaps the main basis of revolutionary film making. Every image that documents, bears witness to, refutes or deepens the truth of a situation is something mnre than a film image or purely artistic fact; it becomes something which the System finds indigestible. Testimony about a national reality is also an inestimable means of dialogue and knowledge on the world plane. No internationalist form of struggle can be carried out successfully if there is not a mutua81 exchange of experiences among the people, if the people do not succeed in breaking out of the Balcanizatlon on the international, continental, and national planes which imperialism is striving to maintain. There is no knowledge of a reality as long as that reality is not acted upon, as long as its transformation is not begun on all fronts of struggle. The well-known quote from Marx deserves constant rewetition: it is not sufficient to intkrpret the world; it is now a question of transforming it. With such an attitude as his starting point, it remains to the filmmaker to discover his own language, a language which will arise from a militant and transforming worldview and from the theme being dealt with. Here it may well be pointed out that certain political cadres still maintain old dogmatic positions, which ask the artist or film-maker to provide an apologetic view of reality, one which is more in line with wishful thinking than with what actually is. Such positions, which at bottom mask a lack of confidence in the possibilities of reality itself, have in certain cases led to the use of film language as a mere idealized illustra-
tion of a fact, to the desire to remove reality's deep contradictions, its dialectic richness, which is precisely the kind of depth which can give a film beauty and effectiveness. The reality of the revolutionary processes aL1 over the world, in spite of their confused and negative aspects, possesses a dominant line, a synthesis which is so rich and stimulating that it does not need to be schematized with partial or sectarian views. Pamphlet films, didactic films, report films, essay films, witnessbearing films - any militant form of expression is valid, and it would be absurd to lay dbwn a set of aesthetic work norms. Be receptive to all that the people have to offer, and offer them the best; or, as Che put it, respect the people by giving them quality. This is a good thing to keep In mind in view of those tendencies which are always latent in the revolutionary artist to ,lower the level of investigation and the language of a theme, in a kind of neopopulism, doyn to levels . - which. while they may well be those u p o i which the masses move, do not help them to get rid of the stumbling blocks left by imperialism. The effectiveness of the best films of militant cinema show that social layers considered backward are able to capture the exact meaning of an association of images, an effect of staging, and any linguistic experimentation placed within the context of a given idea. Furthermore, revolutionary cinema is not fundamentally one which illustrates, documents, or. passively establishes a situation: rather, it attempts to intervene in the situation as an element providing thrust or rectification. To put it another way, it provides discovery through transformation. The differences that exist between one and another liberation process make it impossible to lay
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down supposedly universal norms. A cinema which in the consumer \ society does not attain the level of the reality in which it moves can play a stimu-lating role in an underdeveloped country, just as a revolutionary cinema- in the neocolonial situation will not necessarily be revolutionary if it is mechanically taken to the metropolis country. Teacfiing the handllng of gurs can be revolutionary where there are potentially or explicitly viable lay- ers ready to throw- themselves into the struggle to take power, but ceases to be revolutionary where the masses still lack sufficient awareness of their situation or where they already have learned to handle guns. Thus, a cinema which insists upon the denunciation of the effects of neocolonial policy is caught up in a reformist game if the consciousness of the masses has already assimilated such knowledge; then the revolutionary thing is to examine the causes, to investigate the ways of organizing and arming for the change. That is, imperialism can sponsor. films that fight illiteracy, and such pictures will only be inscribed within the contemporary need of imperidist policy, but, in contrast, the making of such films in Cuba after the triumph of the Revolution was clearly revolutionary. Although their starting point was just the fact of teaching reading and writing, they had a goal which was radically different from that of imperialism: the training of people for liberation, not for subjection. The model of the perfect work of art, the fully rounded film structured according to the metrics imposed by bourgeois culture, its theoreticians and critics, has served to inhibit the film-maker in the dependent countries, especially when he has attempted to erect similar models in a reality which offered
him neither the culture, the techniques, nor the most primary elements for success. The culture of the metropolis kept the age-old secrets that had given life to its models; the transposition of the latter to the neocolonial reality was always a mechanism of alienation, since it was not possible for the artist of the dependent country to absorb, in a few years, the secrets of a culture and society elaborated through the centuries in completely different historical circumstanc&. The attempt in the sphere of film making to match the pictures of the ruling countries generally ends in failure, given the existence of two disparate historical realities. And such unsuccessful attempts lead to feelings of frustration and inferiority. Both these feelings arise in the first place from the fear of taking risks along completely new roads which are almost a total denial of "their cinema." A fear of recognizing the particularities and limitations of a dependency situation in crder to discover the possibilities inherent in that situation by finding ways of overcoming it which would of necessity be original. The existence of a revolutionary cinema is inconceivable without the constant and methodical exercise of practice, search, and experimentation. It even means committing the new film-maker to take chances on the unknown, to leap into space at times, exposing himself to failure as does the guerrilla who travels along paths that he himself opens up with machete blows. The possibility of discovering and inventing film forms and structures that serve a more profound vision of our reality resides in the ability to place oneself on the outside limits of the familiar, to make one's way amid constant dan-a-o ~ -. rc Our time i,s one of hv~othesisrath-
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er than of thesis, a time of works in process - unfinished, unordered, violent works made with the camera in one hand and a rock in the other. Such works cannot be assessed according to the traditiona1 theoretical and critical canons. The ideas for our film theory and criticism will come to life through inhibition-removing practice and experimentation. "Knowledge begins with practice. After acquiring theoretical knowledge through practice, it is necessary to return to practice." l2 Once he has embarked upon this practice, the revolutionary fi'lm-maker will have to overcome countless obstacles; he will experience the loneliness of those who aspire to the praise of the System's promotion media only to find that those media are closed to him. As Goddard would say, he will cease to be a bicyc,le champion to become an anonymous bicycle rider, Vietnamese style, submerged in a cruel and prolonged war. But he will also discover that there is a receptive audience that looks upon his work as something of its own, that makes it part of its own existence, and that is ready to defend him in a way that it would never do with any world bicycle champion. Implementation
In this long war, with the camera as our rifle, we do in fact move into a guerrilla activity. This is why the work of a film-guerrilla group is governed by strict disciplinary norms as to both work methods and security. A revolutionary film group is in the same situation as a guerrilla unit: it cannot grow strong without military structures and command concepts. The group exists as a network of complementary responsibilities, as the sum and synthesis of abilities, inasmuch as it cperates harmonically with a lead-
ershlp that centralizes planning work and maintains its continuity. Experience shows that it is not easy to maintain the cohesion of a group when it is bombarded by the System and its chain of accomplices frequently disguised as "progressives," when there are no immediate and spectacular outer incentives and the members must undergo the discomforts and tensions of work that is done underground and distributed clandestinely.' Many aban-. don their responsibilities because they underestimate them or because they measure them with values appropriate to System cinema-and not underground cinema. The birth of internal conflicts is a reality present in any group, whether or not it possesses ideological maturity. The lack of awareness of such an inner conflict on the psychological or personality plane, etc., the lack of maturity in dealing with problems of relationships, at times leads to ill feeling and rivalries that in turn cause reall clashes going beyond ideological or objective differences. All of this means that a basic condition is an awareness of the problems of interpersonal relationships, leadership and areas of competence. What is needed is to speak clearly, mark off work areas, assign responsibilities and take on the job as a rigorous militancy. Guerrilla film making proletarianizes the film worker and breaks down the intellectual aristocracy that the bourgeoisie grants to its followers. In a word, it democratizes. The film-maker's tie with reality makes him more a part of his people. Vanguard layers and even masses participate collectively in the work when they realize that it is the continuity of their daily struggle. La hora de 10s hornos shows how a film can be made in hostile circumstances when it has the support and 12
Mao Tse-Tung, op. cit.
collaboration of militants and cadres from the people. The revolutionaryfilm-maker acts with a radically new vision of the role of the producer, teamwork, tools, details, etc. Aboye all, he supd i e s himself at all levels in order to produce his fitlms, he equips himself at all levels, he learns how to handle the manifold techniques of his craft. His most valuable possessions are the tools of his trade, which form part and parcel of his need to communicate. The camera is the inexhaustible expropriator of image-weapons; the projector, a gun that can shoot 24 frames per second. Each member of the group should be familiar, at least in a general way, with the equipment being used: he must be prepared to replace another in any of the phases of production. The myth of irreplaceable technicians must be exploded. The whole group must grant great importance to the minor details of the production and the security measures needed to project it. A lack of foresight which in conventional film.making would go unnoticed can render virtually useless weeks or months of work. And a failure in guerrilla cinema, just as in the guerrilla strugg'le itself, can mean the loss of a work or a complete change of plans. "In a guerrilla struggle the concept of failure is present a thousand times over, and victory a myth that only a revolutionary can dream." '"very member of the group must have an ability to take care of details; discipline; speed; and, above all, the wi!lingness to overcome the weaknesses of comfort, old habits, and. the- whole climate of pseudonormality behind which the warfare of everyday life is hidden. Each film is a different operation, a different job requiring variations in methods in order to confuse o r refrain from alerting the enemy, especially as the processing laboratories are still in
his hands. The success of the work depends to a great extent on the group's ability to remain silent, on its permanent wariness, a condition that is difficult to achieve in a situation in which amarentlv nothing is h a p pening aG4 the " film-maker has been accustomed to telling all and sundry about everything that he's doing because the bourgeoisie has trained him precisely on such a basis of prestige and promotion. The watchword "constant vigilance, constant wariness, constqnt mobility" has profound validity for guerrilla cinema. You have to give the appearance of working on various projects, split u p the materials for processing, use go-betweens, mix The Material with other materials, put it together, take it apart, confuse, neutralize, and throw off the track. All of this is necessary as long as the group doesn't have its own processing equipment, no matter how rudimentary, and there remain certain possibilities in the traditional laboratories. Group-level cooperation between different countries can serve to assure the completion of a film or the execution of certain phases of work that may not be possible in the country of origin. To this should be added the need for a reception center for file materials to be used b the different groups and the pel spective of coordination, on a cor tinentwide or even worldwide scale, of the continuity of work in each country: periodic regional or international gatherings to exchange experiences, contributions, joint planning of work, e t ~ . At least in the earliest stages, the revolutionary film-maker and the work groups will be the sole producers of their films. They must 13
Guevara, Guerra (Guerrilla Warfare).
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bear the responsibility of finding ways to obtain the economic means to facilitate the continuity of work. Guerrilla cinema still doesn't have enough experience to set down standards in this area; what experience there is has shown, above all, the ability to make use of the concrete situation of each country. But, regardless of what these situations may be, the preparation of a film cannot be undertaken without a parallel study of its future audience and, consequently, a plan to recover the financial investment. Here, once again, the need arises of closer ties between political and artistic vanguards, since this also serves for the joint study of forms of production, exhibition, and conA guerrilla film can be aimed only at the distribution mechanisms provided by the revolutionary organizations, including those. invented or discovered by the -. film. . maker hims elf. - . Production, dlstribution, and economic possibilities )r survival must form part of a single strategy. The solution of the problems faced in each of these areas will encourage o t h e r people to join in thc work of guerrilla film making, which will enlarge its ranks and thus make i t less vulnerable. The distribution of guerrilla films in Latin America is still in swaddling clothes, while System reprisals are already a legalized ]act. Suffice it to note in Argentina the raids that have occurred during some showings and the recent f ~ l msuppression law of a clearly fascist .iaracter, in Brazil the ever-increasing restrictions placed upon the most militant comrades of cinema nova, and in venezuela the banning and license La hora de 10s hornos; almost all over the continent censorship prevents any pos.:ibility of public distribution.
Without revolutionary films and a public that asks for them, any attempt to open up new ways of distribution would be doomed to failure. But both of these already exist in Latin America. The appearance of the films opened up a road which i n some countries, such as Argentina, occurs through .showings in apartments and houses to audiences of never more than 25 people; in other countries, such as Chile, films are shown in parishes, universities, or cultural centers (of which there are fewer every day); and, in the case of Uruguay, showings were given in Montevideo's biggest movie the- ater to an audience of 2500 people, who filled the theater and made every showing an impassioned antiimperialist event. l 4 But the r>rospects on the continental indicate that the possibi-lity for the continuity of a revolutionary cinema rests upon the strengthening of rigorously underground base struttures. Practice implies mistakes and failures. l5 Some comrades will let themselves be carried away by the success and impunity with which they present the first showings and wili tend to relax securitv m e-a s ures, while others will go in* the opposite direction of excessive precautions or fearfulness, to such an extent that distribution remains circumscribed. limited to a few CrouDs of friends. only concrete experience in each country will demonstrate which are the best methods there, which do not always lend themselves to applicationVinother situations. In some places it will be possible
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The Uruguayan weekly Marcha organized late-night and Sunday morning exhibitions that are widely and well received.
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The raiding of a Buenos Aires union and the arrest of dozens of persons resulting from a bad choice of projection site and the large number of people invited.
to build infrastructures connected to political, student, worker, and other organizations, while in others it will be more suitable to sell prints to organizations which will take charge of obtaining the funds necessary to pay for each print (the cost of the print plus a small margin). This method, wherever possible, would appear to be the most viable, because it permits the decentralizatim of distribution; makes possible a more prdfound political use of the film; and permits the recovery,, through the sale of more prints, of the funds invested in the production. I t is true that in many countries the organizations still are not fully aware of the importance of this work or, if .they are, may lack the means to undertake it. In ,..-L -+ha- m a + h can be 3 U C l l CCLDCD U L I L G I l l l S L 1 l lods used: the delivery of p rints to encourage distribution an1d a box-off i n e n..+ tn +ha n c r r n n i ~ r.L= Luc vls,.~s,ers showing, cuetc. The ideal goalof toeach be ---no
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zations and militants. A film can be made, but if its distribution does not allow for the recovery of the costs, it will be difficult o r impossible to make a second film. The 16 mm. film circuits in Eurooe (20 000 exhibition centers in
Sweden, 30 000 in France, etc.) are not the best example for the neocolonialized countries, but they are nevertheless a complement to be kept in mind for fund raising, especially in a situation in which such circuits can play an important role in publicizing the struggles in the Third World, increasingly related as they are to those unfolding in the metropolis countries. A film on the Venezuelan guerrillas will say more to a European public than 20 explanatory pamphlets, and the same is true for us with a film on the May events in France or the Berkeley, USA, student struggle. A Guerrilla Films International? And why not? Isn't it true that a kind of new International is arising through the Third World struggles; through OSPAAAL and the revolutionary vanguards of the consumer societies? A guerrilla cinema, at this stage still within the reach of limited layers of the population, is, nevertheless, the only cinema of the masses possible today, since it is the only one involved with the interests, aspirations, and prospects of the vast majority of the people. Every important film produced by a revolutionary cinema will be, explicit or not, a national event of the masses. This cinema of the masses, which is prevented from reaching beyond the' sectors representing the masses, provokes with each showing, as in a revolutionary military incursion, a liberated space, a decolonized territory. The s h w i n g can be turned into a kind of political event, which, according to Fanon, could be "a liturgical ,mt, a privileged occasion for human beings to hear and be heard." Militant cinema must be able to extract the infinity of new possibilities that open up for it from
the conditions of proscription imposed by the System. The attempt to overcome neocolonial oppression calls for the invention of forms of communication; it opens up the possibility. Before and during the making of La hora de 10s hornos we tried out various methods for the distribution of revolutionary cinema - the little that we had made up,to then. Each showing for militants, middlelevel cadres, activists, workers, and university students became - without our having set ourselves this aim beforehand - a kind of enlarged cell meeting of which the films were a part but not the most important factor. We thus discovered a new facet of cinema: the participation of people who, until then, were considered spectators. At times, security reasons obliged us to try to dissolve the group of participants as soon as the showing was over, and we realized that the distribution of that kind of film had little meaning if it was not complemented by the participation of the comrades, if a debate was not opened on the themes suggested by the films. We also discovered that every comrade who attended such showings did so with full awareness that h< was infringing the System's laws and exposing his personal security to eventual repression. This person was no longer a spectator; on the contrary, from the moment he decided to attend the showing, from the moment he lined himse!f up on this side by taking risks and contributing his living experience lo the meeting, he became an actor, a more important protagonist than those who appeared in the films. Such a person was seeking other committed people like himself, while he, in turn, became commiited to them. The spectator made was for
the actor, who sought himself in others. Outside this space which the films momentarily helped to liberate, there was nothing but solitude, noncommunication, distrust, and fear; within the freed space the situation turned everyone into accomplices of the act that was unfolding. The debates arose spontaneously. As we gained in experience, we incorporated into the showing various elements (a stage production) to reinforce the themes of the films, the climate of the showing, the "disinhibiting" of the participants, and the dialogue: recorded music or poems, sculpture and paintings, posters, a program director who chaired the debate and presented the film and the comrades who were speaking, a glass of wine, a few mates, etc. We realized that we had at hand three very valuable factors: 1) The participant comrade, the man-actor-accomplice who re- sponded to the summons; 2) The free space where that man expressed his concerps and ideas, became politicized, and started to free himself; and 3) The film, important only as a detonator or pretext. We concluded from these data that a film could be much more effective if it were fully aware of these factors and took on the task of subordinating its own form, structure, language, and propositions to that act and to those actors - to put it another way, if it sought its own liberation in the subordination and insertion in the others, the principal protagonists of life. With the correct utilization of the time that that group of actorpersonages offered us with their diverse histories, the use of the space offered by certain comrades, and of the films themselves, it was necessary to try to transform time, energy, and work into freedom-giv-
ing energy. In this way the idea began to grow of structuring what we decided to call the film act, the film action, one of the forms which we believe assumes great importance in affirming the line of a third cinema. A cinema whose first experiment is to be found, perhaps on a rather shaky level, in the second and third parts of La hora de 10s hornos ("Acto para la liberaci6n"; above all, starting with "La resistencia" and "Violencia y liberaci6nn). Comrades- [we said at the start of "Acto para la liberaci6n"], this is not just a film showing, nor is it a show; rather, it is, above all, A MEETING - an act of anti-imperia,list unity; this is a place only for those who feel identified with .this struggle,' because here there is no room for spectators or for accomplices of the enemy; here there is room only for the authors and protagonists of the process to which the film attempts to bear witness and to deepen. The film is the pretext. for dialogue, for the seeking and finding of wills. It is a report that we place before you for your consideration, to be debated after the showing. The conclusions [we said 'at another point in the second part] to which you may arrive as the real authors and protagonists of this history are important. The experiences and conclusions that we have assembled have a relative worth; they are of use to the extent that they are useful to you, who are the present and future of liberation.. But most important of aJ1 is the action that may arise from these conclusions, the unity on the basis of the facts. This is why the film stops here; it opens out to you so that you can continue 'it. The film act means an open- ended film; it is essentially a way
of learning. The first step in the process of knowledge is the first contact with the things of the outside world, the stage of sensafions [in a film, the living fresco of image and sound]. The second step'is the synthesizing of the data provided by the sensations; their ordering and elaboration; the stage of concepts, judgments, opinions, and deductions [in the film, the announcer, the reportings, the didactics, or the narrator who leads the projection act]. . And then comes the third stage, that of knowledge. The active role of knowledge is expressed not only in the active leap from sensory to rational knowledge, but, and what is even more important, in the leap from rational knowledge to revolutionary practice. ( . . .) The practice of the transformation of the world. (...) This, in general terms, is the dialectical materialist theory of the unity of knowledge and action l5 [in the projection of the film act, the participation of the comrades, the action proposals that arise, and the actions themselves that will take place .later]. Moreover, each projection of a . film act presupposes a different setting, since the space where it takes place, the materials that go to make it up (actors-participants) , and the historic time in which it takes place are never the same. This means that the result of each projection act will depend on those who organize it, on those who participate in it, and on the time and place; the possibility of introducing variations, additions, and changes is unlimited. The screening of a film act will always express in one way,or another the historical sit16
Mao Tse-Tung, op. cit.
uatiop in which it takes place; its perspectives are not exhausted in for power but will inthe stead continue after the taking of power to strengthen the revolution. The man of the third cinema, be it cinema or a film act, with the infinite categories that they contain (film letter, film poem, film essay, film pamphlet, film report, etc.), above all counters the film. industry of a cinema of characters with one of themes, that of individuals with that of masses, that of the author with that of the operative group, one of neocolonial misinformation with one of information, one of escape with one that recaptures the truth, that of passivity with that of aggressions. To an institutionalized cinema, he counterposes a guerrilla cinema; to movies as shows, he opposes a film act or action; to a cinema of destruction, one that is both destructive and constructive; to a cinema made for the old kind of human being, for them, he opposes a cinema fit for a new kind of human being, for what each one of us has the possibility of becoming. The decolonization of the film maker and of films will be simultaneous acts to the extent that each contributes to collective decoloni- . zation. The battle begins without, against the enemy who attacks us, but also yithin, against the ideas and models of the enemy to be found inside each one of us. Destruction and construction. Decolonizing action rescues with its practice the purest and most vital impulses. I t opposes to the colonialization of minds the revolution of consciousness. The world is scrutinized, unraveled, rediscovered. People are witness to a constant astonishment, a kind of second birth. They recover their early ingenuity, their capacity for-adventure; their
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lethargic capacity for indignation comes to life. Freeing a forbidden truth means setting free the possibility of indignation and subversion. Our truth, that. of the new man who builds himself by getting rid of aM the defects that still weigh him down, is a bomb of inexhaustible power and, at the same time, the only real possibility of life. Within this attempt, the revolutionary film-maker ventures with his subversive observation, sensibility, imagination, and realization. The great themes the history of the country, love and unlove between combatants, the efforts of a people that comes awake - all this is reborn before the lens of the decolonized camera. The film-maker feels free for the first time. He discovers that, within the System, nothing fits, while outside of and against the System, everything fits, because everything remains to be done. What appeared yesterday as a preposterous adventure, as we said at the beginning, is posed today as an inescapable need and possibility. " Thus far, we have offered ideas and working propositions, which are the sketch of a hypothesis arising from our personal experience and which-will have achieved something positive even if they do no more than serve to open a heated dialogue on the new revolutionary film prospects. The vacuums existing in the artistic and scientific fronts of the revolution are sufficiently well known so that the adversary will hot t r y to appropriate them, while we are still unable to do so. Why films and .not some other form of artistic communication? If we choose films as the center of our propositions and debate, it .is because that is our work front and because the birth of a third cinema means, at least for .us,the most important revolutionary artistic event of our times.
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Two Years of TRlCONTlMENTAL TRICONTINENTAL magazine, organ of the Executive Secretariat of anniversary. celebrates its second OSPAAAL, The twelve issues that have been published during this period have included contributions from the most distinguished leaders of the so-called Third World as well as revolutionary intellectuals interested in the struggles of the national liberation movements. The magazine has also published articles containing valuable information and reports on current events on the three continents - events which are dealt with on.ly superficially, if at all, in the general press at the service of imperialist interests. In the course of the past two
years, Tricontinent: been a source of information on the African, Asian, and Latin-American struggles against neocolonialism and imperialism, while serving as a forum for the open debate of ideas, with an emphasis on those concerning our essential problems, especially on the question of revolution. From the heroic fight of the Vietnamese against US aggression, to the actions of the Palestinian commandos, to guerrilla activity in Africa and Latin America, the magszine has given a panorama of the present situation in the Third World, that vast mosaic of oppressed nations exploited by imperialist hegemony. Although it is an organ of the Executive Secretariat of OSPAAAL, the magazine has also included articles on especially interesting themes. and opinions which, although not alwaysI representing
